The RD Diaries – 21

It’s 5.30am and the traffic is light and I can’t stop scratching this fricken mosquito bite on the inside of my left thigh and as I head to the Elite Sports Performance gym to begin a massive year of powerlifting where I will smash all my previous ‘personal bests’ I am almost vibrating with excitement and aggression and this is most likely the cause of a white flash of anger that overwhelms me when I see – through the rear vision mirror – that I am being encroached upon by a Red Porche hammering its way towards me in my 1989 faded red Toyota Corolla .

The Porche is very very flashy and supercool and as the right-hand blinker signals the driver’s intention to overtake me I am relieved that I fitted my Corolla with two hubcaps and a nice aerial only ten years ago as I am sure this will not go unnoticed.

He’s going way too fast and the fact that he’s doing so is purely an expression of his desire to dominate me and while I am trying to maintain my rage to attempt a 300 kilogram deadlift at the gym I feel my foot pressing into the accelerator hard and as I fight against the urge to burn this prick off in a car that was previously owned by a ninety-year-old lady who only ever drove it back and forth to the corner Milk Bar I notice that he is not only speeding but also talking on his mobile and the arrogance this displays and the danger he poses to the average motorist gives my accelerator foot no choice but to hammer down hard.

Disappointingly, my Toyota Corolla with the hotted-up aerial has just reached 65 KPH as the Porche begins to disappear over a rise one hundred meters ahead and in a mad rush to gain back some sense of power I attempt to flip the bird to his rear vision mirror but am impeded by the Dictaphone I hold in one hand and the IPod I hold in the other… suddenly I am aware of the fact that I can only really be so furious with his mobile phone-compromised driving if I was equipped with three or possibly four arms and so I sheepishly put the Dictaphone down.

Fuck him anyway. I am going to lift 300 kilograms and I’ll be doing it at a place where such a display of useless strength is much more impressive than a useless Porche and a useless suit and a useless pooncy gel-filled hair style.

This frickin mosquito bite itches and the more I itch the closer I get to drawing blood and this reminds me of how badly Archie was bitten last week at a family barbecue and how Lewis escaped unscathed which in turn reminds me of a story that Reservoir Mum told me and in order to remember this story so that I can blog about it later I pick up the Dictaphone again, press the record button and begin to recount the details.

‘Well,’ I say to the Dictaphone, ‘Reservoir Mum is driving Archie, Lewis and Tyson to Nanny and Gramps’ house so that she can go to work and I can pick them up on the way back from the gym.’

I pull up to traffic lights. I suddenly feel like I am being watched. As I turn to the right I see a middle-aged woman sitting in her car. She looks forward – rat-trap fast – when she realises I’ve caught her spying. I reason that she’s probably a bit freaked out by seeing a bald guy who is dressed in filthy filthy powerlifting clothes while sitting in an old lady’s car and talking into a dated piece of electronic equipment – like some relic from the days of tape recorders and Rubik’s cubes – and I like this very much and so wind down my window and talk loudly in her direction.

‘So, Reservoir Mum told me that, on the way there in the car, Archie licked his fingers and said ‘Mummy I just licked my finger and it was tasty.’ to which Reservoir Mum replied, ‘Don’t lick your finger Arch, you never know what’s on it.’

I look down momentarily as I scratch again at my insect-inspired welt and see that I have created a rash that is approaching the outskirts of my nether-regions. When I glance to my right again I see that the woman is staring at me and shaking her head and I lose some of my previous confidence and feel just a tad self-aware and so speed off as fast as I can to get in front of her when the lights change. I get to about five KPH above the speed limit and put some distance between us so that I can continue recounting the story.

‘And after a long pause Archie says,’ I say, to the Dictaphone…

Another red light allows me to go back to scratching around the mozzie bite’s edges, furiously – back and forth, up and down, round and round and damn it all to hell the woman has pulled up beside me again, this time on my left side. To my horror she goes right back to staring at me, with an expression on her face that makes me feel like I am a big pile of poo she’s just stepped in but despite this I am determined to appear as if I am not intimidated by her and I continue, but only after I slink down a little – and whispering…

‘Archie says. “Oh, I know why mozzies bite me Mum – it’s because I’m cool and mozzies don’t like you to be cool.”’

Reservoir Mum says, ‘Maybe that’s it, Archie…’

I turn the Dictaphone off and put it on the seat behind me as I once again race forward to get ahead of the staring woman and I’m feeling rattled – here I was psyched and ready to lift 300 kilograms and now after being attacked by the Porche guy and the staring woman I don’t even know if I have enough energy in the tank to pull 200.

Taking the Dictaphone I do my best to finish the story. ‘Um, then Archie, after licking his finger again, says “Oh! No! Mum! I know why the mozzies bite me now! It’s because I’m so tasty!” and Lewis, who has remained quiet till this point almost bursts from his car seat restraints to say, “Yeah! And I’m licky!”’

I am now convinced that hell has opened up and released this she-devil upon me. I am at the traffic light and she is beside me again. Her eyes burn into me and – having just watched Drag Me To Hell recently – I am approaching a level of fear-induced hysteria. I throw the Dictaphone down, turn to her and mouth, helplessly, the words ‘What do you want from me…’ and then, following her line of vision right down to my groin, I become horribly aware of what furiously itching that area of myself must look like to someone outside my car. I suddenly see that I am not just a bald guy dressed in filthy filthy powerlifting clothes sitting in an old lady’s car talking into a dated piece of electronic equipment. To the staring woman I am a bald guy – badly dressed, sitting in a rundown car – who is leering at a middle-aged woman, pleasuring himself and recording the moment for posterity, and that is just filthy filthy filthy.

When the lights change the staring woman takes off and I sit there watching the back of her head as it gets smaller and smaller and I feel just a tad under permanently humiliated.

A few blocks later she finally turns off and I drive on feeling safer, but weak and small, and as capable of a big deadlift as the anti-hero Strawberry Jelly Man – who is not a real anti-hero but someone I made up just now to represent my level of physical power and intellectual esteem.

To prevent myself plummeting further into the realm of insignificance I shuffle through my IPod for something uplifting. The Dictaphone lies beside me like a dead bird. I have forgotten the rest of Reservoir Mum’s story, but she’ll remember, and the fact that I will blog about the funny things my kids say allows me to feel some justification for all the madness I draw into my life. One day they will love to read about the things they said and how I took the time to write about it. That’s what I’m hoping anyway. Plus, the sound of the partially angry song Monkey which is so great – in a gay-ish, George Michael-ish kind of way – may lift me again, if I give it enough time.

‘If David Sedaris had got married and had kids, he would have been Reservoir Dad. Fall-on-the-floor funny, sharp, witty and just a little bit sexy.’ ~ Kerri Sackville, Best Australian Blog 2013 judge

A sharply funny, fresh and irreverent chronicler of real life in today’s parenting trenches, Reservoir Dad is a stay-at-home dad whose award-winning blog has already won hearts and minds all over Australia and beyond for telling it like it is and making us laugh out loud – and sometimes cry, but in a good way.

I Wasn’t!

About The Author

I fell into this blogging thing but now see it as that crucial cog in the machine. Blogging offers me a great creative outlet with an immediate audience. It freshens my perspective. Reliving my time with the boys, recording our last pregnancy and the birth of our fourth child and dancing around the intimate moments of my relationship with Reservoir Mum acts as a time capsule for my family, adds a little extra to my world, and reminds me of how good I’ve got it.

A hard day at the office becomes a learning experience in retrospect, a chance to colour the most difficult moments with a touch of the crazy, something to savour, something to reread later with the boys on my lap.